People take photographs for many different purposes. Many people enjoy taking photographs as a hobby or a pastime, commonly to keep a permanent record of places visited on holiday or days out, or in order to keep a memento of family celebrations such as birthday parties or festive occasions. Others, such as photo-journalists, take photographs during the course of their professional work.
Often a given event is attended by a number of individuals, each of whom has his own camera and takes his own photographs of the event in question. The individuals' photographs will often show the common event from different perspectives and viewpoints, and the photographs taken will inevitably be influenced by the individuals' own judgement and perception of the event.
At parties and other gatherings, friends often take photographs of each other. Additionally, it is often desirable, but often not possible, for an individual to take pictures of himself. Even if his camera has a built-in self-take timer-based mechanism, this can be difficult to operate, and requires the camera to be positioned carefully and then the individual to stand in the correct place in front of the lens before the camera's timer causes the picture to be taken. An alternative approach is for the individual in question to give his camera to another person to take his photograph. However, this involves entrusting the other person, who may be a stranger, with a potentially expensive piece of equipment. It is not unheard of for camera thieves to operate in this way, offering to take a photograph of the camera owner and then fleeing with the camera when it is handed over.
If the volunteer is known to the camera owner and is not a camera thief, there is nevertheless often another problem to be surmounted before the photograph of the camera owner can be taken: The volunteer must rapidly familiarise himself with the controls of what may well be an unfamiliar camera. Modern cameras can have complex controls which would need to be adjusted in order to take the optimum picture, and explaining these features to the volunteer may take an undesirably long period of time. In photography it is important to be able to “capture the moment”: The camera owner may well wish to have his picture taken alongside a transient object such as a passing vintage car or steam train, a well-known film-star or other celebrity, or a rare fleeting animal or bird. Having to explain the mode of operation of an unfamiliar camera to someone in order for this picture to be taken may result in this opportunity having been missed, possibly for all time.
Part of the enjoyment to be derived from amateur photography is the showing, sharing and swapping, among friends and family, of photographs one has taken. It is often the case that an individual takes a number of photographs of which others would like copies. With respect to events attended by multiple photographers, it is common for attendees to wish to have copies of the pictures of the event that the others have taken, so as to be able to benefit from the individuals' respective vantage points and, often, good fortune in being able to capture an event that the others missed or did not photograph as successfully.
With cameras that utilise photographic film, the procedure for swapping such photographs is potentially extremely awkward and time consuming. The individuals in question have no definite way of knowing the appearance and composition of the pictures until the film is finished and the photographs have been developed and printed. Multiple copies of the film (or possibly of individual pictures if the printer allows) can be printed straightaway, but without knowing the appearance of the pictures beforehand this may result in the unnecessary printing of multiple copies of ultimately unwanted photographs. Alternatively, one set of prints may be obtained and then selected reprints can be commissioned, but this protracts yet further the overall timeframe for supplying the copies of the pictures to the people who required them. Printing of multiple copies of prints can also become expensive if numerous reprints are required. A further disadvantage is that reprints would often need to be posted (thereby incurring additional cost) to the intended recipients, whose addresses would first need to be known.
With digital cameras the procedure for swapping photographs is partially facilitated, since most digital cameras allow the user to preview pictures using a built-in display, and thereby decide which pictures to swap with the other photographers. However, in a group event such as a party or a concert, the various individuals would need to look at the pictures held in a number of different cameras to decide which pictures to exchange. A possible existing way of achieving this would be to pass the digital cameras around the members of the group, for each person to make a note of the pictures taken by others that he would like copied, and then for the users to go their separate ways and either to print the pictures and send them physically (e.g. by post) to the intended recipients, or to send the digital image file by electronic means such as e-mail using a computer. In the latter case there is not currently a standard exchange protocol for camera to camera image communication, so each member of the group would have to transfer their own images to a personal computer (PC) and then e-mail the pictures to everyone in the group. This would require obtaining the e-mail addresses of the intended recipients beforehand.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,167,469 teaches a digital camera adapted to send specific images, on explicit instruction by the user, to nominated recipients via the Internet. The uploading of pictures to a dedicated website, for viewing by others, is also taught. It will be appreciated that the use of such a system in which photographs have to be specifically uploaded may be time-consuming to use, and that this does not readily enable the sharing of pictures taken by individuals attending a common event.
Whatever existing alternative is chosen, it will be apparent that ensuring that the members of a group of photographers who attend a common event have access to each other's photographs requires considerable co-ordination between the members of the group. It is potentially costly in time, effort and expense, and each member of the group is obliged to remember to take the requisite personal action for the benefit of the others.
It is a general object of the present invention to overcome or at least mitigate the problems identified above.